Thursday, March 13, 2008

The other day, I caught a snatch of this on my car radio in that disjointed way one does while doing errands.

But I think there's really no happy ending here. If the Americans stay, then they're only postponing the inevitable, which is fulfillment of the civil war.

But the Mahdi army is growing impatient with the cease-fire. Mahdi army men are losing control, losing their power and influence. They're still being arrested by the Americans, so they're growing resentful.

The Sunni militiamen feel like they're not getting anything from the Iraqi government, so why are they in this bargain? The Americans forced the Iraqi government to promise to integrate 20 percent of the Sunni militiamen into the Iraqi security forces. That's not really happening.

There's no reconciliation. In fact, the Iraqi government just acquitted two famous death squad leaders from the Ministry of Health. I mean, they're basically an insult to the entire Sunni community.

Unthinkable -- realism on NPR about conditions under U.S. occupation in Iraq? Well if you follow the link, not really, as a Neocon policy hack was "debating" the undebatable, that this U.S. war is completely hopeless, in fact a stinking quagmire.

The speaker of realism was the reporter Nir Rosen. He was recently on the ground -- unembeded, speaking Arabic -- in Baghdad. Read his account of real life in Iraq here. There's no peace ahead for suffering Iraqis and this remains the invaders' (our) fault.

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What is this blog for?

This San Francisco purveyor of graffiti has it right. When times are bleak -- when country and planet sink under the barely restrained sway of greed, raw power, and fear -- it's time to restate what matters.

I write here to preserve and kindle hope for a national and global turn toward multi-racial, economically egalitarian, gender non-constricting, woman affirming, and peace choosing democracy that preserves the habitability of earth for all. There's a big order -- but what else is there to do but struggle for this? Not much.

Topics range from the minuscule to the transcendent to the global, from dire to delightful. I am not an optimist, but I refuse to allow myself to wallow within the easy bias that everything is going to always be awful. Good also happens; love lives too.

I've been yammering here about activism, politics, history, racism and other occasional horrors and pleasures since 2005. I intend to continue as long as the opportunity exists. In this time, that means activism and chronicling resistance. Perhaps it always has, one way and another.

About Me

I'm a progressive political activist who runs trails and climbs mountains whenever any are available. I've had the privilege to work for justice in Central America (Nicaragua and El Salvador), in South Africa, in the fields of California with the United Farmworkers Union, and in the cities and schools of my own country. I'm a Christian of the Episcopalian flavor; we think and argue a lot. For work, I've done a bit of it all: run an old fashioned switch-board; remodeled buildings and poured concrete; edited and published periodicals, reports and books; and organized for electoral campaigns. Will work for justice.